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Leaves are falling, daylight is fleeting and as the year starts to come to a close there’s a slight panic in the air as marketers rush to make sure goals are met. Many of those goals include driving traffic and revenue through holiday email marketing.

Yet ask anyone about the state of their inbox and they’ll complain of being overwhelmed with too many emails — particularly this time of year. Even email marketers will commiserate that there’s too much to keep up. With so much inbox stress you might expect a backlash — a mass unsubscribing from email lists or a sudden increase in carpel tunnel syndrome from repeated clicks on the spam button. In fact, the opposite is true.

Relevant content is the primary reason for email’s success driving conversions. No matter how cluttered someone’s inbox might be people will make time for content that speaks to them.

Here’s a list of the top things you can do today to maximize your holiday campaigns:

Segment your audience. Frankly this might be the single most important piece to providing relevant content. There is no ‘one message fits all’ anymore. Take the time to craft messaging based on subscriber preferences like purchase types, frequency, email engagement, etc.

Show me that you know me. Use your custom field data to add personalized content for each subscriber. In its simplest form you know this as “Dear {First_Name},” but don’t stop there. Use whatever other data you have to highlight what makes that subscriber unique.

Make it dynamic. Showing a subscriber you know their name is a great start but nothing says personalized like showing content based on my preferences. For example, if you’re raising money for a local animal shelter and you know Mary usadopted a Labrador Retriever earlier this year, then make sure the main image in her email is of a cute Labrador puppy. Use insertions to show specific content based on custom field data and watch your donations increase.

Think mobile. With everyone running around this holiday it makes sense that there’s a better than 50% chance your email will be seen first on a mobile device. Use mobile responsive email templates so content is shown correctly on any device and above all else, please make sure the first two sentences of your campaign are saying something interesting. That and one second, are all you’ve got to convince someone to open your email on their mobile device. Don’t waste that opportunity with “Having trouble viewing this email?”

Don’t trust anything you read. These aren’t such much tips as they are tenants of email marketing best practices. But every business — just like every subscriber — is unique. Make sure you’re AB testing each campaign to find what works best for you. If you don’t have time to do anything else, at least test your subject lines. You’ll be glad you did.